Take My Hand
by Lorata
Summary: Before rebel and renegade, between victor and mentor, Lyme was in recovery: angry, bitter, confused and lost, a trained killer without a purpose. Nero, her mentor, has his work cut out for him - especially since not all ghosts come from the Arena. Comes after Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice.
1. Chapter 1

It starts with a word.

* * *

"No," Nero says, prying Lyme's hand away from her wrist.

"I wasn't doing anything." Lyme doesn't look at him, just curls her fingers and tries to dig her nails into the soft flesh of his hand. It doesn't work; he's bigger than she is, especially now that she's dropping weight like crazy, and his hands are the size of her head.

"You're not fooling me, little girl," Nero tells her, and he keeps her left arm still at her side while lifting up her right. Her wrist is raw and oozing blood, and it's not a big deal. It's _scratches_. Any Career gets worse injuries than that when they're seven; Lyme had her palms and the soles of her feet sliced open with tree branches for talking back when she was four.

She had to get skin grafts for the burns on her legs, but you don't see Nero being a baby about _that_ .

"It was itching," Lyme says instead, yanking her hand free, and this time he lets her. It's clear he lets her, too; he holds on for half a second before releasing her, just long enough to tell her that she didn't do this on her own. Something hot and twisting builds up in her stomach. "I just wanted to make it stop."

"No," Nero says again. "C'mon, let's spar it out."

Sparring is good, at least; it lets her leak the violence out like lancing a boil. (People say that all the time but Lyme doesn't know what it means, and she's almost curious. The best way to make something go away is to cut it out; wouldn't it be nice if everything was that easy, slide in a scalpel and watch it bubble and ooze and drip until it's gone.)

* * *

"No," Nero says when Lyme asks if she can go into town.

"I just want to get out of here." Lyme scowls, curled up on the couch with a blanket wrapped around her despite the heat. "I'm going crazy."

"You can go out soon, but not yet," he says, patient - too patient, it's getting on her nerves. "The first time I went out after my win, I nearly took the head off some asshole I decided looked at me the wrong way. You're still a little jumpy. Nothing wrong with that, we'll get you sorted, but it's best to wait until fall, at least. People won't always piss you off by then."

"People have always pissed me off," Lyme mutters, digging her chin into her knees. "People suck."

Nero laughs like she managed to surprise him. "That they do, sweetheart. But like it or not, nobody in this village will be killing anyone ever again, and I'm not gonna have you getting blood on your knuckles unless it's another victor's and you have my permission. Okay?"

Lyme sinks down and frowns until her forehead muscles ache and she gives herself a headache, and after a while of that Nero clucks his tongue and tugs her up to spar again.

* * *

"No." This time he caught her with a paring knife, slipping it under her skin and peeling it back, but the ink from her victor's tattoo goes down too deep, too deep. The pain dizzies her, leaves her reeling, and it doesn't take much for Nero to get the knife away from her. He snaps the blade in his fingers and tosses it in the trash. "It's not going away, remember that. You're a victor now. You could cut your whole hand off at the elbow and it wouldn't change that."

She wanted this, is the crazy thing. Lyme closes her eyes against the blood and lets Nero bandage her again, and she thinks back to all those years at the Centre, convinced she was made for this and nothing else. That much is still true - there's nothing else she would ever be than this, a societally-sanctioned killer. If she hadn't been the kind that gets crowns and parades, she would've become one another way. Too much anger, too much hate, a whole tornado of rage wrapped up in a not-pretty girl's body.

She's grateful. She is. But at the same time Lyme wonders if it might've been better being the other kind. Stalking the alleys, looking for men who trapped women in dark corners; watching the streets for women with bruised faces and downcast eyes, children with unnatural shuffling gaits who shy away from touch; finding the assholes who did it and cutting them into pieces.

"No," Nero says again, not looking up from the gauze he's affixing around her wrist.

"No what?" Lyme demands. "I didn't do anything!"

"No whatever you're thinking, little girl, because I know your faces and that's not a good one." Nero raises an eyebrow. "Prove me wrong."

Lyme tells him, because when your mentor asks that's what you do, and he says she'll never say anything that scares him but she almost wants to try. He goes still, then closes his eyes, and Lyme blows out a breath. "Well? At least if I was a serial killer, I'd only have killed people who deserved it. I liked killing at the Centre, I liked - they did bad things, and I wanted to make them pay for it, but I killed ten kids and they didn't do _anything_ . Isn't that worse?"

Nero lets out a long sigh, then wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. Lyme fights him for a second but there's no point, and she hides her face in his chest because at least then no one knows her eyes are burning. "Remember what I told you," Nero says, running his fingers through her hair. He means the week before when she tried to scrub the tattoo away with salt, and Lyme shakes her head. "What's done is done, Lyme. But we do what we can to make up for it."

"But it never goes away." Lyme grips his shirt, pain still twingeing in her wrist.

"No," Nero says, softly.

* * *

No, when she sneaks a razor from his bathroom and drags it down her forearm.

No, when she tries to hide her medication in the cracks of the couch.

No, when she turns the shower on its hottest setting until the skin on her back blisters.

No, no, no. A lifetime of no after an adolescence of yes, of try harder, of you can do it, keep going, don't stop, push push push, be the best and forget the rest. It's not what they promised her.

The problem is, she doesn't know what she wants instead.

* * *

Once Lyme breaks a glass in the kitchen. Not on purpose for once, but she's tired and squirrelly and the smooth surface slips in her fingers and it falls, shattering on the hardwood. The medication that Nero still won't let her taper off from keeps her brain muzzy, and the sunlight streams in through the window and catches on the tiny shards and all she can think is how pretty it is. Glass is sharp and bright and shiny, glittering like a sword blade, and the Centre always taught her that blades look best when stained with blood.

It's not a glass anymore, just pieces, and Lyme isn't a tribute anymore, just a victor, and both of them are broken and have no purpose and her mind buzzes buzzes buzzes like bees and maybe if she could just see some blood she'd remember why she's here -

"Lyme?" Nero calls from the other room, looking back at her through the gap between the counter and the cupboards above. Sometimes they sit together on the bar stools and watch the TV from the kitchen, but today he's on the couch. "You doing okay?"

Lyme blinks. "I think there's something in my foot." There's a weird, prickly burning in the sole, and her voice sounds faraway. Nero is even farther when he curses and heaves himself up, and before Lyme can stop him he's picked her up and carried her over to the sofa. "It's fine," Lyme tells him. His face is impassive but it always is, he never lets her see beneath it and it's not fair, why should she be stripped raw and naked and bleeding in front of him and he get to keep his calm always?

"It is fine, because I'm gonna make it fine, so just stay there." Nero grabs a med kit from under the sink - they're all over the house - and brings it back, dragging her foot into his lap. He pulls out a pair of tweezers and a strip of bandage and a bottle of disinfectant, and Lyme turns onto her side and rests her head against the cushion and drifts while he fixes her. The antiseptic burns, hot and clean, jarring her out of it with a gasp, but then Nero's hands are warm and strong and steady as they wrap the gauze around her foot.

"That was my fault," Nero says, fingers warm against her ankle, thumb brushing over the jut of bone and making the hairs prickle. Nobody has waxed her since the Capitol and Lyme isn't allowed razors and honestly she kind of never wants them again. No more smooth and hairless and girlish for her, not ever. "I'll get plastic sent over. How you feeling, honey?"

Lyme sucks in a breath that gets stuck halfway. "I don't know." Sometimes she says it to be annoying ( _you tell me, you're the mentor_ ) but today it's true. Today there's nothing but a big grey emptiness inside her, and the blood didn't help and the pain didn't help and there is no helping, not for her.

"Well, I'm right here," Nero says, squeezing her foot, and Lyme closes her eyes.

* * *

Nero nudges Lyme awake. Lyme cracks one eye open, and the only reason she doesn't snarl at him is that the patch of sunlight on the wall is white, not pink or orange. "Sleeping late today," Nero says casually, sitting down on the edge of the bed. His weight makes the mattress dip, and Lyme starts to slide down toward him before she digs her knee into a spring to keep herself steady. "Everything okay?"

"Fine." There's no clock by the bed because otherwise Lyme can't stop calculating how many times she wakes up at night. "Just don't feel like getting up."

"Well, too bad for you, little girl." Nero pulls the blankets back, and Lyme would be grumpier about that except it's not cold in the house and she was feeling a little scratchy and over-warm anyway. Still, it's the principle. "We're getting up and going for a walk up the trails. The lake's real pretty this time of year."

Lyme glares at him as he fishes out some clothes and tosses them at her. "I asked to go outside last week and you said no."

"Last week it wasn't a good idea."

"And now it is, when I don't want to anymore?" Lyme grabs the shirt and pants and holds them to her chest, teeth clenched hard enough to give her a headache. "So, what, I'm supposed to use reverse psychology on you to get what I want? Pretend I don't want to go outside and then you'll let me?"

Nero shoots her a look from underneath his eyebrows. "No, you're supposed to trust me that I know better than you. It's for your own good, little girl."

(the snap of the leather as he slaps his belt against his palm in warning; the whistle as it cuts through the air and smacks against skin; the sting as the buckle slams into her back, leaving bruises and blood and welts; _it's for your own good little girl this stops when you cry little girl this hurts me more than you _ arms bending muscles burning bones breaking with a creak-crack-snap and fire _you brought this on yourself little girl why didn't you just do what I asked little girl I know better than you_ )

"Get out!" the scream rises up inside her and burst its way through her throat before Lyme even registers the words. She throws the clothes at him because it's the only thing in reach but it's not enough. Her mind is a big white buzzing blank and Nero is there, staring, gawking with big eyes and he won't _leave_ , he's in her house and in her room and in her space and she asked for a woman and they gave her a man and that's what men like him do, they don't care. They don't care what she wants, they care about power and putting girls in their place and showing them exactly where they should be and how they should obey and if they don't obey then well looks like you need a _lesson_ -

"Fuck." Nero backs up and holds out his hands, palms facing her, and he pulls himself in and makes himself small. It would be funny except it isn't. "Lyme. Hey. I'm not touching you, okay, I'll stay right here, just sit down."

"And what if I don't?" Lyme snarls, but he used her name - her real name, the one she chose for herself, not the one they gave her that came with chains and hair ribbons - and that drags her back, at least a little. "What are you gonna do?"

"Then you don't sit." Nero swallows, his throat bobbing, and she could wrap her hands around his neck and squeeze but she'd never be able to hold on long enough unless she got him on the ground and used her whole weight. "Sit or don't, but I'll stay right here."

The room presses in close against her, the walls shuffling in, and so Lyme sits, in the middle of the bed where the walls can't get to her, wrapping her arms around her legs. She digs her feet into the blankets to stop herself from rocking. "What do you want?" she asks finally. Her tattoo itches and her fingers twitch to pick at it but she won't, she's stronger than this.

"It's not about what I want, it's about what you need."

"Yeah, but that's bullshit," Lyme says, and the words hit him like a slap to the face and make him flinch and that feels nice. Powerful. "You chose me because you wanted me even though another mentor would be better. So right from the start this was about you, right?"

Nero leans back until his head hits the wall with a low _thunk_ . "I chose you because nobody else would understand. Callista came from Peacekeepers, they didn't hug it out or anything but they were good parents, raised her well, even saw her off in the Justice Building and gave her their blessing. She wouldn't get it."

"Just because you think you understand doesn't mean you were right for me," Lyme says, her throat tightening to choke off the words, but she pushes them through. Her entire body hums like a power line, and the thing is - the thing is, just because Nero had a shitty father doesn't mean he understands _shit_ about her life. He was never a girl, never had to listen to horror stories of the day his body would one day flip a switch and he'd crave babies and marriage and sex and everything whether he wanted to or not. Never learned about the terror of childbirth as something that could be forced upon him - parasites growing inside, eating him from the inside out, then finally bursting out in a mess of blood and shit and fluid to ruin his life for the next eighteen years - any time some man decided he felt like it.

For Nero, growing up would've meant holding out, ducking the blows or taking the hits in gritted silence until he got big enough to get away. Because for boys there was an away, there was an _until_ , but for girls - for Lyme, young and angry and bitter and terrified - there was nowhere to go. Nowhere without men, without those monsters who looked at girls like toys and treats and trinkets, who took what they wanted until they didn't want it anymore and threw the trash away.

Nero swallows, and he wipes his hands on his jeans once, twice, three times before running them both over the top of his head, linking his fingers together at the back of his skull. He stands straight and still, but even so he reminds Lyme of the lizards she speared with the tip of her sword before roasting them over her fire in the Arena. "Fuck," he mutters finally, under his breath, and when he looks up his eyes make her want to take a step back. "Look, you're right about one thing, I was selfish. I wanted to save you from all the shit you went through, and that was about me, not you. You're right."

Lyme should probably feel triumphant, or vindictive, or something, but it's just like when she woke up in the hospital expecting to feel like a victor and finding nothing but emptiness. "So now what?"

"Well -" Nero swallows again, and this is off book, it has to be. This conversation is not part of the mentor training manual, just like his talking about shitty parents and sharing cocoa with her at the eleventh hour. "It's always gonna be a little bit about us - and you, when you have a kid of your own. Mentoring is about doing whatever you can to save the kid, but the thing is, if it works, the two of you are stuck with each other for the rest of your lives. If you can get the kid sponsors and help them win but not connect with them later, then you're better off as the backup, running the ring and playing consultant. You might've trusted Callista or Adessa quicker out of the box, but they didn't get what made you tick and I did. I _do_ . And without that, it would've come back to bite both of you in recovery. Sometimes we play the long game. Sometimes a kid grabs us so tight there's nothing we can do but fight."

It's a whole other world that Lyme never really thought about - in the Centre they're taught to listen to their mentor, to trust their expertise, but nothing about afterward because in the Centre there is no after - and here's the whole world tilting itself sideways and expecting her to stand. Lyme frowns. "You can't do that every year."

"There are enough mentors and candidates in Two that yeah, we can," Nero says, matter of fact. "If there's a candidate who doesn't grab any of the mentors, unless someone higher up insists, they're put on the backup track and they age out as the replacement. We're not like the other districts. Every person in this Village is here because someone else wanted them."

An image flashes in her mind: sitting in front of the mirror while her mother raked a brush through her tangled hair, catching the thin-lipped sour-lemon expression of disappointment in the reflection. Lyme grits her teeth against the memory and drowns it, quick and methodical. "But sometimes you play the long game and they die." It doesn't hit her until after that she said 'they', not 'we'. She's not a tribute anymore, never again.

Nero nods, chewing on his lip. "Most of the time they die," he says, his voice going dark and ugly and bleeding and faraway. "I always told myself the hurt would be worth it, if ever one came back to me. And I can tell you right now, looking at you, it's true."

Lyme looks away, her face flaming, but there's no one watching and nobody laughing and Nero doesn't push it. "That still doesn't tell me why you have to call me that," she says, throwing out he words like knives, and he won't have an answer to that one because there is no answer. "How am I supposed to trust you when you talk like him?"

"I'll stop if you want me to," Nero says without hesitating, and Lyme sits back and blinks. "I'm serious. If you're thinking of your old man every time I say it, then it's not doing what I want it to." He pauses, and Lyme refuses to take the bait and ask him what he does want it to, but he doesn't continue and she really doesn't want to sit here all day, so finally she rolls her eyes and makes a 'go on' gesture. Nero doesn't make a big deal out of her caving, just keeps talking. "You think 'girl' is an insult, and he's the one who taught you that. It's shitty and it's wrong, and if you're ever going to be a mentor you can't be thinking that."

She scowls. "It is, though."

"No, it's not, except by people who are shit-heads." Nero narrows his eyes. "Look what he did to you. You hate men and you look down on women, where the hell is that supposed to leave you? How are you supposed to interact with people when that's what you're going with? You're not killing anymore, sweetheart, this is the real world, and in the real world it's not you on a pedestal with everyone at your feet, and it's not you with a sword and everyone trying to kill you, either. You can't go through life spitting on one half of the population and sneering at the other, and you damn well won't save any kids that way."

Lyme bites the inside of her cheek until she'll be poking it with her tongue for the next three days, and Nero waits to see if she has anything to say before continuing. He's reined himself in a little, drumming his fingers against his leg. "I call you a girl because that's what you are, just like Odin calls Brutus 'my boy' because that's what he is."

"Yeah, except you don't call me 'my girl'," Lyme counters, and she's slipping on ice but she has to dig her feet in somewhere. "You call me 'little girl'. That's what he used to say to put me in my place."

"That's what I'm doing, just differently," Nero says, and this time Lyme gapes at him and nearly chokes on air because she'd thought he would at last be cagey about it. "You are a cocky little shit, Lyme, and that's part of the reason I wanted you, but it's also going to get you in trouble. You don't respect anybody except yourself, and if you think you'll last five minutes in the Capitol with that attitude you'll find your kid chomped by a mutt three hours in just to show you who's the boss."

Lyme sinks down into a low slouch, and maybe if she doesn't make eye contact she won't have to admit Nero has a point. The trainers always harped on her about overconfidence, even pitted her against older, prettier girls to bring her down, and she'd hated it then and thought she'd escaped it now. If winning the Games didn't give her license to be cocky, then what did?

Nero chuckles, and Lyme glares at him but it's not mean, or mocking; there's understanding there, and a fair dash of bitterness, too. He crosses the room - slowly, slowly, giving her enough time to tell him no if she wants - before sitting on the far end of the bed. "Okay, and see, this? This is why Callista and Adessa wouldn't work for you, because I get it. Respect for people like us, it means the boot grinding your face into the dirt. Respect is something that someone takes from you and leaves you bloody, and knowing your place means taking the hits because they tell you that you deserve it."

"And now you're going to tell me I'm wrong," Lyme says wryly, but she presses her hands against her legs to stop the shaking. ( _You will respect me little girl if it's the last thing you ever do_ ) "I can't wait."

"Respect is earned," Nero says firmly. "Never taken. You can't force it. And knowing your place is a good thing, you think I don't know mine? No Two victor, no matter how good their Games, no matter how many kids they save, will ever be above the Capitol. No victor will ever be above their mentor. It's not about stomping on ants, it's about working together and making a world that makes sense. You start pulling out pieces and the whole tower falls over. Our whole system is built on trust. You trust that the people above you will do right by you; they trust that you'll do your job. That's all it is."

Lyme leans her head back against the wall and looks up, but the underside of the windowsill block her view of the sky outside. "It sounds nice when you say it, but so does a lot of stuff." Like how all she had to do to get everything she ever wanted was murder a handful of teenagers. In reality nothing is ever free.

"Yeah, well, you'll have to take it on faith for now, but I'm not feeding you bullshit." Nero nudges her with his foot, and she's too tired to snap at him. Or maybe she just doesn't feel like it either way. "There's nothing wrong with being a girl. There's nothing better about being a guy. There's everything wrong with being an abusive shit no matter what sex you are. I call you 'little girl' because you are, you're a girl and you're in my care and I'm going to take care of you just like you're gonna take care of somebody else someday."

She opens her mouth to say she doesn't need anyone to take care of her, but then Lyme's gaze snags on the healing gashes on her forearm, the blood-spotted bandages covering her feet, and maybe she does. She heaves a breath and presses her hand to her face, and Nero doesn't say anything, doesn't touch her, just sits there, a solid presence at the edge of her awareness.

"You said we were going for a walk," Lyme says finally, digging her palms hard enough against her eyes that the blackness behind her lids fractures into a spiralling burst of colours.

"That's right." Nero still doesn't move. "Where d'you think you wanna go?"

Lyme exhales and sits back, eyes stinging. "You said there was a lake, right?"

"Yeah, there's a gazebo, could grab some lunch and take it with us." Nero holds out a hand, and maybe she's crazy, maybe she's weak and stupid and gullible, but maybe it doesn't matter. Lyme reaches over and takes it, his fingers warm and solid as they hold hers. "Welcome to a whole new world, little girl."

Lyme snorts and wipes her eyes. "See, now you've ruined it," she accuses him. Nero grins and winks at her, and the shadows from the tree branches dance in the sun-patches on her wall. "You're making the sandwiches then."

"Deal," Nero says, and squeezes her hand.

* * *

NOTE: we're not done, there's more to come. Nero's POV is up next.


	2. Chapter 2

Lyme grew up in a town just off the Belt, a stretch of Two halfway between the capital city, with the Peacekeepers and the Justice Building and Two's wealthiest, and the sprinkling of pit mines ringed with quarry towns and nothing else. She grew up where the rocks were the wrong kind for mining so they put in a bunch of trains and made it into a transport hub instead, and the people never really figured out if they should be big-city suave or small-town charming and so they managed to grab a lot of the stuck-up parts from both and very little of the good.

She's doing her best to forget, and five years in the clean white Centre dorms are doing their part, but mostly Lyme remembers the dust. Lots of dust, and rocks; the only good thing about the place had been the river and even then Lyme only saw it once a year when her family headed up to the closest Reaping point. She liked to stare at it flashing past the windows on the train, silvery and glinting in the early morning light, and imagine jumping in and washing off the dust and the grit and the imprint of her father's fingers on her arm.

The first time Lyme saw actual water it was a million degrees below freezing and she and her fellow thirteen-year-olds were stripping off to jump in the frozen lake. She survived and passed the test, no fishing-out required by the trainers unlike three of the kids who panicked and got shipped off home as washouts that afternoon, but it killed any desire to swim for fun. The Centre did that a lot, but they made her from a girl who took hits to one who could give them, and Lyme will always be grateful. Nature, beauty, who needs that when there's blood and steel and power.

But then Nero takes her out to the lake. He actually does pack sandwiches just like he promised, makes them himself in front of her in the kitchen while Lyme taps her foot against the table leg in a steady rhythm to see if he'll get annoyed (he doesn't. They take the winding path back through the apple orchard and Lyme's mind flickers, just a little, with memories of flashes of sunlight on water or imagined breezes, and anticipation shivers through her.

They walk the paths and Lyme turns her face up toward the sky now and then, catching glimpses of the blue through the waving green leaves. It's the height of summer so the air is warm and heavy but it's not like her Arena, dry and sand-blasted with nothing but scrub-brush and tall razor-grass that sliced her legs and fuelled the fire that chased her. Here it smells different, flowers and growing things and life, and one time her shoe turns over a clump of fallen leaves and dirt and the scent of it all is rich and heady enough that Lyme has to brace herself against a tree.

Not the Arena. Never again the Arena, and she reaches up the next time they pass a low-hanging branch and snags a piece, turning over sprig in her hand. "What is it?" Lyme asks without thinking. She didn't mean to, it's just that she knows trees, everyone knows trees, and the trunks are brown and rough and jagged and the stuff on top is green. But these trunks have a white layer like paper and the leaves a bright yellow. Against the sun the effect is almost blinding.

"Aspen," Nero says. "Good wood, used for lots of things, furniture bits mostly, or mouldings. Resilient, too. The wood doesn't catch fire easily and the roots go deep, so even if there's a forest fire the trees will keep standing."

Lyme casts Nero a sideways glance, afraid he's going to turn this into some kind of survival metaphor, but he doesn't, just runs a hand down a tree trunk and steps over a fallen log.

She asks "what's this" about each type of tree they pass and Nero answers every time. An itch of annoyance starts up in the back of her mind, and Lyme can't help wondering if Nero walked the route with a field guide beforehand, memorizing everything so he'd be able to answer her questions. He always has an answer to everything, doesn't he, and the temper is rising in her chest and pressing out hot and impatient when Lyme asks him about birdsong.

"Ah," Nero says, stopping and rocking back on his heels. "You'll have to ask Odin for that one, he's the one who knows birds. I just know wood."

The tension unwinds, just a little. "How come you know wood then?"

"I like carving, making furniture, that kind of thing. It's my Talent," Nero says. Lyme hadn't ever thought to ask him about that. "Not my official one, that's collecting rocks."

Lyme stops. "Collecting rocks. You're serious."

"Oh yeah," Nero says, and he's smiling but it's a tight, practiced kind of smile and Lyme can't help but feel a small thrill of satisfaction that she's made him think about something unpleasant for once. "Every so often I go out, pick up a bunch, throw 'em in a tumbler. Get 'em all polished up and ship 'em out to the Capitol for people to put on their mantels as Victor souvenirs."

It's such an absurd thought, Nero diligently choosing rocks from along the path, bending over a rock tumbler and fiddling with the abrasive sand, that Lyme can't help the snicker that escapes her. "Why rocks?"

Nero swallows, and ha, she's scored another point, though it would mean more if she knew what she'd done. Finally he lifts one hand, sends it down and sideways in a swift stroke, as though miming —

Oh.

Lyme has seen tapes from Nero's Games before, one of the nasty Arenas where the Cornucopia had food and supplies but no weapons. The tributes had nothing but the rocks on the ground and a scattering of bricks and broken-off pipes from the half-destroyed buildings. Nero killed the smallest tributes by hand — choked them, snapped their necks, made it quick — and the others by bashing skulls in. His finale, he'd pounded in a boy's head with a fist-sized chunk of brick.

As a trainee Lyme had watched a cut of the final kill, sitting forward on the floor with her eyes narrowed, taking in every detail. She'd looked down at her hands, broad and strong, at the muscles in her arms that kept building the more she trained, and she'd thought to herself, _I could do that_.

And now Nero collects rocks so people in the Capitol can have a pretty conversation piece. Maybe they even paint them with red splatters too, for an extra special something. Lyme wrinkles her nose. "That's kind of fucked up."

"Eh," Nero says in a philosophical sort of tone, spreading his hands. "Could be worse. Some days it's almost funny. But that's why we tend to go with two Talents around here, one for them and one for you."

The only thing Lyme has a talent in is killing, but that's the sort of thing she's pretty sure will get a big old mentor frown so she doesn't say it aloud.

They make it out to the lake soon after that. It's not really a lake, probably more of a pond, but Nero calls it a lake and that's good enough for Lyme. The trees stop and the path lets out into a grassy meadow that goes almost right down to the water, just a small strip of dirt at the bank. Someone built a dock out over the water, and off to the side there's a gazebo just like Nero said. It's almost offensively picturesque, but the sunlight sparkles over the top of the water just like Lyme remembers from the river, and the long willow branches brush the surface and all right, not terrible.

In a way it's good that her Arena was a sun-baked hellscape; it keeps it far away from the green woods around her. Three weeks of torture is worth not having memories of mutts descending from the trees or scrambling down from the mountainside.

Lyme drops down onto the ground where the grass thins out into the sandy bank, and Nero settles himself beside her and hands her a sandwich. Lyme eats slowly, savouring the good, thick bread and the sharp bite of the pickles. Centre food filled her up quickly but it didn't taste like this, and in the Capitol she'd been on a steady bulk-up diet that ran high on protein and low on carbs. Not a lot of sandwiches there, and definitely none that wasted time with condiments.

Nero actually wrapped himself up some extra pickles in wax paper, and back at the house Lyme laughed at him because who does that, except she's never actually had pickles before. They're crunchy and soft at the same time, a texture that Lyme's brain still can't quite parse, and the flavour is bright and crisp and tangy and it's not like anything else she's ever eaten.

Lyme glances over at Nero, sitting cross-legged with the extra pickles balanced on the paper spread over one knee. He's looking out over the lake, and Lyme reaches out a hand and slowly, slowly sneaks it over until she snags a pickle and draws it back. Nero doesn't react even though nobody wins the Hunger Games not to notice when someone steals their food, but Lyme doesn't care because it's tasty and she's not going to over think it.

By the end of the meal Lyme has eaten all but two of Nero's pickles, and he hasn't complained once. Lyme can't tell whether to be pleased or annoyed but decides to leave the last two for him. After waiting a minute to be sure she doesn't want any more, Nero pops both of them into his mouth and crunches down.

"Good, huh," he says, folding up the paper and stowing it back in the bag because they're both killers but Snow forbid they litter. "Emory makes 'em."

Lyme blinks. "Really?" She's never really thought about _making_ pickles, how do you make pickles, aren't they just … pickles? But obviously that's not the case, and Lyme gets distracted trying to figure out what that means.

"Yeah, she grows the cucumbers out back and she's got a crock and everything," Nero says. "Traded me a whole bunch for fixing the creak in her floor. I'll get some more."

The conversation peters out after that, and Lyme stares out over the water. Winged bugs dart out across the surface of the lake, skimming just over the water and landing with their little legs spread out. The best part is when they actually stand on the surface and don't fall in, and Lyme never cared much about school when it was just something she had to suffer through until Residential but now the world feels so much bigger, crammed full of things she doesn't know.

Not that she's going to ask Nero how bugs can stand on the water and not sink, okay, she's not five, but maybe there's a book somewhere that will tell her. Wouldn't her teachers laugh about that.

The surface of the lake ripples lightly under the breeze, the light wind pushing patterns of movement from one side to the other in gentle swirls. If this were an Arena Lyme wouldn't be anywhere near the edge, not before convincing someone else to get close first to see if any mutts were hiding, but this isn't the Arena and there are no mutts here. Lyme scoops up a small rock and tosses it into the lake, where it hits with a wet _plunk_ and sinks down.

"Do you ever swim?" Lyme asks.

"Don't really know how," Nero says. "I mean, they threw me in the lake the same as everybody so it's not like I'd drown if I fell in, but I never made a hobby of it. Some of the others do, though. If you want I bet somebody could teach you."

Lyme leans back on her hands and stretches. "Nah," she says. She doesn't actually need to, not right now; it's enough to know she could if she wanted to. That in itself is a strange thought.

The walk back is quiet. Nero carries the picnic stuff and Lyme shuffles her feet in the underbrush, kicking up leaves and scuffing the carpet of pine needles when they pass through the evergreen clearing. It's nice enough that Lyme is only a little bit annoyed that Nero was right about going outside.

Afterward they head in and Nero washes the picnic dishes, angling himself at the sink so to keep from turning his back entirely to her as she sits at the counter, swinging one leg. Lyme rolls her eyes a little but whatever, the churning terror and fury and everything else from this morning has moved on and she's not going to chase after it.

"Hey, listen," Nero says finally, and Lyme frowns because that's his voice gone serious again but with an edge of something else that sounds almost unsure. "Look, we all carry skeletons around, and it's not fair for me to make you carry mine."

"What?" Lyme watches him but his face gives nothing away, Career-blank in a way that means his thoughts have got to be falling over themselves.

"I told you about my sister," Nero says, and Lyme has to stop herself from hissing in a breath. Nero's sister's life is exactly what terrified Lyme as a child, made her steal a chisel from the workshop and keep it under her pillow in case anyone came into her room at night and tried to do things to her. "My old man did what he did because they were alone, because no one was there to stop her. I couldn't protect her but I can protect you. I wanted to make sure you were safe."

_Victim_ is a word Lyme has heard about women like Nero's sister, people too weak to defend themselves, and Lyme jerks back as her cheeks flush hot. She is not a _victim_. "I'm not your sister," she snaps. "I'm not weak, I don't need you —"

"I know," Nero says, holding up his hands. "I know, that's why I'm apologizing. I'm your mentor and my job is to protect you, but it's also to protect _you_, not so I can stop feeling bad about my sister. That's not why I chose you and it's not why I take care of you now. I'm here because of you and that's the end of it."

The flash of anger fades, leaving behind something low and simmering. "So does that mean you're going to let me go outside by myself now?" Lyme challenges. Nero and his ever-present _no_ haven't disappeared just because he let her filch some pickles today, she's not that stupid.

Nero lets out a breath, and there it is, another _no_ even if he doesn't say it out loud. "You live in the Village now, which means that nothing and nobody can hurt you except you. But I've gotta say, kid, right now you're doing a bang-up job all by yourself."

The lines on her arm stare up at her, the fresh, angry red ones and the puckered pink of the healed-over welts and the faint white lines from the first attempts in the initial weeks, and Lyme's instinctive protest dries up before she can even form the words. The guilt and the sick twisting in her stomach when she thinks about her fellow tributes (_meat_) and their dead, dead eyes staring up at her, bubbling up until she can't take it anymore and needs to open up her skin to let it out.

Lyme covers her wrist with her hand, and at least Nero doesn't shame her by following the motion with his eyes. "I don't do it on purpose," she says, but that's not exactly true. "Or — I do, but I don't want to hurt myself. I just —"

But there is no 'just', there are no answers, and Lyme trails off. Nero sighs. "I know, but right now the why is less important. Every time I turn around you're putting your hand through the mirror or stepping on broken glass or carving up your arms. You're not the only one, half the Victors have done it for one reason or another, but you don't stop when it's safe. If someone else was doing that shit to you I wouldn't leave you alone with him, you can bet your ass."

Lyme drops her head to her hands, pushing her fingers into her hair. It's getting long now, or at least shaggy, and she twists her fingers and pulls. "It's not like that," she says finally, but when she tries to tell him what it is like the words slip away like blood into the shower drain.

"I know," Nero says again, and he doesn't, he can't, but Lyme is too tired to argue. "It's not forever. You'll find a different way to deal and that will be better and I'll step back for you. A mentor isn't here to hold your hand every day for the rest of your life."

The words don't mean much of anything but then something snags, and Lyme raises her head. "What did you mean, I'm not the only one? Who else?"

Nero pushes his tongue into the side of his cheek as his expression goes thoughtful, and that's probably the kind of stuff that's private and not meant to be shared with the youngest Victor, huh. Lyme is about to say never mind when Nero turns and sits down at the kitchen table, beckoning her to join him.

"Calli," he says, then corrects himself. "Callista. Not so much anymore, but she used to do it a fair bit. Now it's only once in a while."

Lyme sits down hard, the wooden legs scraping across the floor as the chair jitters. "What? No. Bullshit."

"Different to why you do it," Nero says, and oh. Lyme had never considered that people might take a blade to themselves for more than one reason. "She missed the blood. Some of us find that part a little harder to leave behind, and Calli was one of them. So sometimes, after she'd promised her mentor to stop sneaking out and knifing people in alleys, she got to wanting to see a bit of blood. Still does, sometimes, when she gets angry. One cut, clean knife, and she'd patch it up afterward." He reaches over and taps the underside of Lyme's wrist. "Not like this."

"Oh," Lyme says, and she takes a second to roll that one around. She glances up at Nero, big and solemn and swimming in enough guilt for a sister he hasn't seen in over ten years that he'd almost smothered Lyme for it. "What about you? What did you do when you got out?"

"Ah." Nero leans back, the chair creaking a bit under his weight but holding. "I dragged every blanket and pillow in the house onto the couch and made a nest, and I kept trying to trap my mentor for hugs," he says, deadpan.

And all right, Lyme can take a hint, he's her mentor but that doesn't mean she gets to peel open his skull and stick her fingers in his brains. If she's allowed her secrets, so is he. "Fine, don't tell me, asshole," she snorts, picking up an apple from the bowl in the middle of the table and lobbing it at his head. But this has all gotten a bit too friendly and Lyme gave him a freebie just now so she can't help adding, "I bet you killed somebody."

She waits for the reaction, but Nero only shakes his head. "Nah. I mean, nobody's ever managed because their mentors stop them first, but I never even tried. After the fifth kid whose head I smashed in, I didn't care about hurting people anymore. I just wanted to get the fuck home and not bring any of that with me. After the Arena that didn't change."

He tosses the apple back to her, and Lyme turns it over in her hands, poking at the smooth red skin and searching for soft spots. "I don't really want to hurt people anymore either," she says. That's one of the things that changed, that she's still trying to get a handle on after coming out of the Arena. "Well, men, sometimes, but it's not — that's different. It's not like the Centre when I used to break people's heads and like it. Now — I don't know."

(The boy from Ten, big and strong and desperate, coming at her with victory in his white-rimmed eyes as the sun beat down hot on her shoulders and her eyes itched and her head pounded dully from dehydration. There had been no joy there, at the end, no thrill at winning the fight. Just exhaustion when she pulled her sword free and watched the blood drop from the blade and splatter onto the dust.)

Lyme lets go of the apple and tilts her arm up so the fruit rolls down her forearm and stops in the crook of her elbow. She flexes her wrist so the marks stand out. "I never wanted to do this before."

"The Arena does strange things to everybody, and it's rarely the same way twice," Nero says. "You never know what it's gonna be like on the other side except for one thing that's always true."

Lyme tilts her head and regards him with narrowed eyes, this giant man who fought Callista for the chance to mentor her and fed her cocoa and peaches when he thought she was going to die. "My mentor loves me?" she says, and she means it to be flippant — to hurt him, maybe, show him she knows what he's thinking and he can't keep it secret — but it deflates a little, like hitting with the flat of the blade.

Nero's expression flickers for a second but he holds it. "Damn right." He looks her in the eye when he says it, chin raised and expression almost challenging.

Lyme looks away first, and the flush in her face spreads out as a strange lightness fills her head. She rolls the apple between her hands, digging in with the bottom edge of her thumbs where they join the rest of her palms. The tips of her fingers catch on the bottom of the apple, and Nero's words press down on her shoulders with the weight of expectation and his dark, solemn eyes that just keep wanting wanting _wanting_, and Lyme's grip tightens on the apple as Nero watches her silently.

"Do all the mentors say that?" Lyme says finally. There's a sour taste in her mouth she can't spit out, and the apple bruises under her fingers as she rocks it back and forth, back and forth. Love is about power and obligation and a hundred things that Lyme wants no part of. Already it will be years before she pays Nero back for the sponsor gifts; the last thing she needs is a chain of words around her ankle to match the circle of ink on her wrist. "Is that a thing? Is there a timeline in the handbook about when that's appropriate to say to your Victor?"

Nero goes still. "No, it's not," he says, carefully, and as always Lyme gets the feeling that she's stabbed him in the side and she can't decide whether to be glad or sorry.

"How long did your mentor wait to say it?" Lyme demands. The itch starts up in her wrists but she can't, not unless she wants Nero standing beside her saying _no_ every day for the rest of her life, and she squeezes the apple harder.

"She didn't," Nero says, and for once his voice sharpens, curls inward, defensive. It's a blade but not aimed at her, and Lyme blinks.

"Didn't say it, or didn't wait?" Lyme asks, chasing the memories that Nero obviously doesn't want to catch. The apple turns in her hands and suddenly — just like being thirteen years old and blindfolded, learning to spot weakness in an opponent's guard by the shiver of locked blades — she feels it, a strange sweet spot in the smooth, solid surface that whispers of victory in her mind, and she tightens her grip and pushes her hands down and apart.

Nero doesn't answer, and the apple cracks in half.

Lyme stares at the broken halves, wobbling on the tabletop, and starts to laugh.

Nero watches her for a while, then sighs and stands up. "I brought some work with me," he says mildly, and his voice is carefully modulated and that means Lyme wins except she couldn't begin to explain what that means. "I'll be in the other room if you need me."

* * *

There's a workout room in the basement. Nero asked her, back in the hospital, if Lyme wanted him to set her up with anything in her house before she got there. She'd been drugged out of her mind and floating on the surface of dark, murky water, but she does remember asking for that. A weight room where she could work out and not get stared at, and furniture sturdy enough that she wouldn't break it.

No weapons allowed in the workout room, not until she's cleared for handling them again, but Lyme isn't in a hurry, not yet. Right now it's about the equipment, and Lyme isn't allowed to use heavy weights without a spotter and so she grabs onto the bar and pulls herself up.

In peak condition, right before her Games, Lyme could outlast every other kid in her year and more than one of the trainers. They'd juiced her up before the Arena to minimize the weight loss, but between the weeks of rations and long days with nothing she'd dropped enough that she felt like a kitten when she woke up. Now she's eating again but it's nothing like the multiple protein shakes with hours of working out each day, and Lyme can't help feeling that there will be nothing left of her by her Victory Tour if she's not careful.

Now Lyme doesn't bother keeping count because the number will only depress her, and focuses on the strain on her muscles instead. She moves through bodyweight exercises, with or without the equipment, and by the time Lyme's arms refuse to hold her and her legs burn and wobble under her weight, her head feels clearer than it has in weeks.

It's a good plan until Lyme looks up at the stairs to get back to the rest of the house. There are only ten of them but it may as well be a mountain, and Lyme leans against the wall and laughs with her forehead pressed against the banister. Finally she sits down on the steps and pushes herself up one at a time, until finally she hits the floor and slides backward, flopped back on the hardwood and giggling to herself.

Nero's footsteps sound across the floor, and the vibrations work their way up through Lyme's back until he's standing over her upside-down, one eyebrow raised. "You all right there, kid?" he asks.

"Fine, fine," Lyme says, and for once she's not even bullshitting. Nero pulled broken glass out of the bottoms of her feet while Lyme sat there in a fugue state; she can handle telling him she over-worked herself. "I did a bunch of exercises and then my arms fell off."

"Can't have that," Nero says. "You gonna live down there now, or can I help you to the couch?"

It's even funnier that he's asking when he's picked her up and carried her before, but Lyme drags herself up to a sitting position. "Give me your arm," she says, and Nero does while keeping a straight face that just makes the whole thing even funnier. Her muscles ache and her head is swimming and nothing makes sense, but Lyme clings to Nero's arm and stumbles back over to the couch, collapsing with a heavy thump.

"I'll get you some water," Nero says, and Lyme hums and stretches out her leg, punching vaguely at her cramping calf muscle. The gurgling of water into the glass is still a peaceful sound after three weeks of scorching desert and freezing nights, and when Nero comes back with her drink Lyme takes it in both hands and finishes it off in one go. "I'll put a cooler down there so you can keep hydrated while working out," Nero says. "I should've thought of that."

Lyme hums and sets the glass on the table, sliding it far away before her brain starts thinking about how easy it would be to smash. Nero picks it up and moves it out of sight in one smooth motion, and since that time in the kitchen he hasn't tried calling her "little girl" or pushed his feelings on her, and it's been nice, if a bit baffling. She keeps waiting for the catch.

Not for the first time, Lyme tries — and fails — to imagine Nero young and crazy with a mentor of his own. She's seen his Games, sure, but that's just the Arena; they don't show the Centre kids the Victors in recovery, swearing and lashing out and doing idiot things like putting their fists through mirrors. Lyme pushes her hair out of her eyes and watches Nero, uncaring if he notices, though he focuses on his paperwork either way.

"Who was your mentor?" Lyme asks finally. Kids in the Centre aren't supposed to think about that, aren't supposed to choose their mentor ahead of time, though half of them do anyway. They all work out the stats at one point or another, too, trying to gauge their odds.

Nero pauses, pen just above the paper. "Adessa."

"Bullshit," Lyme says again. Nero chuckles a bit to himself, and all right, maybe she does say that a bit too automatically. "But wait, really? But she's so —"

Everyone knows the stories about Adessa's Games, though the candidates aren't usually shown them. Adessa had been an Offering, one of the old generation of kids raised by their parents for the Arena as soon as they were old enough to understand. Tributes aren't supposed to have families, Victors even less so, but enough stories and whispers got around about Adessa, daughter of the elite, whose parents were involved in the creation of the Program all those years ago.

Adessa, who killed with a cool detachment that only snapped over into bloodlust at the end, who dissected a fellow tribute out of curiosity after she killed him and calmly ordered the hovercraft to wait until she finished. Adessa, who paired class and culture and understatement against Callista's sharp-toothed madness or Odin's moralistic bluster.

Adessa killed with knives and precision and asked the sponsors for a cloth to clean the blood from her hands; Lyme's brain fights to reconcile that with Nero, young and hulking, bashing out his opponent's heads in with his bare hands, and in the end all she gets is a headache.

"I know," Nero says, a trace of amusement curling in his voice. "Believe me, I asked her why she chose me. I thought there had to be some sort of trick."

"What did she say?" Lyme asks, curious in spite of herself. She still remembers the taste of hot cocoa, the dull burning on her tongue because she sipped too fast, as Nero held her with his gaze and answered her question with an honesty that shocked her.

Nero's hand doodles nonsense on the corner of his paper; he'll have to start over, he can't hand it in with swirls and abstract patterns and little studded knives all over the top, but he doesn't seem to notice, either. "I'll never forget it. She said I made the strongest candidate. That she'd looked over all the factors and I was the one who fit best. It made logical sense, and she had faith I'd do the job." He looks down, finally catches the mess he's made of his paper, and turns it over. "She was right."

"Oh," Lyme says. That's more or less how she thought it went with mentors before Nero told her it was more than that. "That's good?"

"Yeah," Nero says, and he starts to write again except he'd flipped the page over and stops short with an irritated sigh.

She should drop it. The exercise helped clear Lyme's brain of some of the cobwebs, and it's nice to feel a good, honest soreness in her muscles from exercise without any cameras or bloodshed or acting attached. There's no reason to hunt for Nero's weak spots now. She should let it go, but instead Lyme tucks her legs under her, curling one hand around her ankle and rubbing her thumb over the join where the skin grafts are healing over. "What was she like as a mentor?"

Nero gives up and sets his paperwork on the coffee table, splaying his hands over his knees. "Very smart," he says, looking up and through the far wall. "The smartest Victor we've got, I'd say, her and Ronan. She could see contingencies five steps before they happened. She had my angle all planned out, pretty much predicted how the Arena would go down. When I was in there I had pretty much whatever I wanted. Nothing but the best for her tributes. Not that I thought to ask for much."

Lyme catches herself peeling at the edge of the line of scar tissue on her leg and yanks her hands back, folding her fingers together. "What about after?"

"I had everything I needed then too," Nero says. "The house, the drugs, all that. She had my recovery schedule all worked out, exactly when I should taper off the medication, when I should start exercising again, when it was safe to go back to bulking, when I could meet new people. She'd done her homework."

_I dragged every blanket and pillow in the house onto the couch and made a nest, and I kept trying to trap my mentor for hugs_.

Lyme sucks her teeth in thought. At the time she'd called bullshit, but — "But she didn't tell you she loved you."

Nero sighs again. "No. She'd gladly skewer anyone who hurt me, because she's my mentor and that's her job, but that's what it was. Her duty. Feelings had nothing to do with it, made it complicated when her job was to keep me safe and sane. She did her job and she was good at it. I had no reason to complain."

Lyme frowns. "If that's the way it's supposed to go, then why aren't you like that? Why is everything with us all about feelings? Why isn't it just a job for you?"

Nero pinches his mouth thin, the corners of his eyes tight. "Because that's not how I wanted it to be," he says, bluntly. "And because I thought that's what you needed."

Any responses Lyme might have planned disappear, and instead she sits in silence, picking at her fingernails. Nero reaches over, pries her hand loose before she can tear off enough skin to make herself bleed, then lets go and stands up. "I'll get you some more water," he says. He gives her a small smile, enough to let her know he isn't angry, but there's a part of him closed off now. "And some fruit. Don't want you to pass out on me, now."

"Thank you," Lyme says, because what else is she supposed to say, and Nero rests a hand on the top of her head on the way past.


End file.
